OK- so my absolute intention is to write once a week; HOWEVER as you shall see from the photos below- shortly after writing my last post on August 22nd I started on a BIG project… This is also going to be a pretty low key post.
CLEANING MY OFFICE/STUDIO!!!!
SO on Sept 4th I made a post on a Facebook group and to my Instagram showing off my office. It looked a little rougher than it had been looking- but to be totally honest- not much worse. I had started to clean up a corner of my office- and when I turned around it looked SO much worse. At that point I had to fulfill my role as a millennial and document the mess and post it to a bunch of strangers!! Like, duh.
Below are a bunch of photos I took on the 4th.
You’ll notice the hutch above my desk table and the corner to the right of that hutch are pretty empty- this is because I stink at taking photos before I start a project- but always remember part way through. The amount of house shuffling over the past month has been a bit crazy not going to lie.
Here’s a brief recap.
We had moved my husband’s office up to our bedroom last year- not really because of the craziness of last year, but that did contribute to it no doubt. At that point we’d only been in the house a year- so still figuring the best place for everything and everyone. Somewhere around that time we’d gotten the electricity to work in a room in the basement that had absolutely become the ‘shove everything in the world in here’ room. So moved him to our room- then I cleaned out that room and made it into a kind of books and movies room.
OK now from July to now
* Husband wasn’t a fan of being in our bedroom- plus was interviewing at various remote work positions and frankly needed his own space.
* SO I cleaned out the media room- rearranged our big room and moved my husband’s office into the media room.
* Big room now houses kids toys, the kids workstations/computers, bored games, homeschool stuff, and the TV and movies. (this works WAY better and despite my worries is actually very cleanable- except for when the girls decide to cut construction paper into a million tiny pieces- thankfully that’s vacuumable. (*note- I’m not currently homeschooling all of my kids- the older 2 are at a charter school now, the youngest we’ve been doing a very lazy Kindergarten at home)
* Then moved treadmill out of the ‘store room’ (which was previously husband’s office, before last year) into husband’s new office- we’re now working to make that room a proper man cave.
* Since his office was out of our bedroom I went about cleaning and rearranging that room- THEN decided to move my sewing stuff out of my studio and up into our bedroom. below is the ONLY photo I could find that sort of shows off that corner and my sewing stuff (while it was still in my office)
After the sewing stuff was out of my studio- that basically brings you to the photos from Sept 4.
It was interesting seeing the responses on the facebook post- I don’t normally post in groups- actually go out of my way to avoid posting. But for whatever reason I posted 3 pictures of my disaster of an office that day with the caption:
“For all y’all that see the beautiful rooms on here that feel discouraged because your room needs so much work. Here’s my space 
it needs a LOT of work. Also, all of my furniture is second hand stuff I’ve gotten from yard sale sites over the past 15 years. With the exception of my drafting table, I bought the cheapest one i could find brand new when I was in my first years of art school. My goal is to have it all sorted and put away by the end of September. Hopefully I can do it this time I’ve made goals like this in the past and then ended up working on other parts of my home and neglecting my space. Anyway I hope the post is allowed, hopefully it’ll make a few of you laugh and to those of you like me that have a knee deep mess, I’m with you sister!”
It was absolutely fascinating. The minority of comments were along the lines of do this, this and this to clean it up- which was kind of people to offer some ideas. One comment I couldn’t tell the tone on- but she asked “do you actually work in there???” I just kinda laughed at that- because it should be obvious looking at the room- no, no work was getting done in there. The majority of the comments were people in solidarity. Thanking me for posting my crazy mess, sharing stories of how their own space had gotten so out of control and whatnot. It was touching and I did my best to respond to as many comments as possible- but I know I missed some. I’m also trying to spend less time on facebook- so I was only checking in once a day if that. In all the post got 285 reactions and 288 comments- though admittedly many of those comments were me replying. Still though- I want to know how to capture that feeling of sisterhood. Women from around the country- probably the world actually- all united on one thing. Our sanctuary is a terrible mess and it is an overwhelming job to clean it. I wish I could give each one of these women a hug and just let her know that she’s loved despite this frustration in her life. This group is dominated by beautiful Ikea rooms, so it was probably a little refreshing to see my ratty eclectic furniture and my crazy mess. This has been an interesting experience.
One of the best parts of my post getting so much traction is that over the last 2 weeks most days I’ve had some reaction when I’ve logged into facebook- and that has made me get off my behind and work in my studio. My goal was to put in at least 45 minutes- but there were definitely days I worked longer. And now- I’m happy to report- the room is clean. There are still 2 boxes of stuff I need to go through and put away a little more carefully- (one is stuff for the bathroom, the other is the last 20 things that were on my floor at the end of the process- you know those little things that you want to keep but don’t know where to put.) Those things I’ll get put away tomorrow- but right now I’m just enjoying that I have a work space again. I did use a fisheye lens to take the photos so I only had to take 2 and not 4, the room is 11’x13′ so it’s a good sized room- but isn’t as big as it looks.
There are still things that need to be finished- need to get more lighting into the room, get some stuff up onto the walls- need to empty the 2 boxes of decorations that are just hanging out above my computer lol. SO I still wouldn’t call the room done- but it is GETTING THERE. More importantly though I now can actually start working on my creative projects again- which makes me so happy.
So the last bit I have to say about this is this- one keen eyed person on facebook observed that I am a ‘multi-crafter’ so I thought I’d take a second and go into what this room is for- I’m going to do it in bullet list form lol.
- Pampered Chef Consultant stuff
- Usborne Books and More Consultant stuff (though my bookshelf is in the big room so my kids can enjoy the books)
- Illustration 2D and 3D (this covers everything from painting to drawing)
- General Art
- Scrapbooking
- Prepping Dungeons and Dragons/Table top RPG sessions
- Planning and household management
- Paper Crafting
- Jewelry making
- Kids Crafts
- Perler Bead Projects
- Any other art type thing that I feel like doing at the moment.
- Writing (blog, novel, graphic novels etc)
- homeschool prep (again not as much these days, mostly just the youngest)
My Sewing room upstairs houses all of the stuff for
- Sewing (duh)
- Doll Making
- Cross Stitch
- Quilting
Admittedly I’ll probably go back and forth between the two rooms a lot with the different projects. SO that’s where I’m at right now.
I actually made this a priority because I’ve been pushing myself to be more mindful of my health- my physical health of course (exercise and eating) but also of my emotional health. I’ve not really been able to just sit and CREATE for awhile- Just in the process of moving it’s been difficult to get everything unpacked and put away. I start working on a room and there always ends up being a kind of ‘dump’ room. Usually with stuff that relates to the room it’s being dumped in. It’s a process I think in another year I’ll have it all sorted. Then we’ll probably move or something lol.
Thanks for stopping by!! I’ll try to be more prompt on my next post- I have several movie/anime/book reviews that I need to finish writing and post- my next biggest organization project will need to be my time lol
Nikkie
Oh and just for fun- below is a gallery of my office in process from Sept 5 to this morning. Since I made sure to take at least on photo every day. Again- used a fish eye lens to capture the whole thing lol.
Decidedly Nikkie 